July 12, 2008 -- I know that Canada’s Sleeman Breweries can craft good beer. A couple of years back, after all, they came out with the impressive Fine Porter, and a little while after that they produced a credible India Pale Ale under the same John Sleeman Presents... brand banner. Plus, their flagship Cream Ale is, in my opinion, pretty much the modern definition of the style.

So what’s with this 20th birthday beer, then.

Breweries celebrate their birthdays with limited edition beers all the time, and usually those ales and lagers are pretty special brews, either exemplifying their style or pushing creative brewing limits. Hence, one might expect that in celebration of their second decade of modern existence, Sleeman would come up with something more than an ordinary and quite unexceptional ale.

You could expect that, but you’d be disappointed.

The Sleeman No. 20 Anniversary Ale, to give the beer its full moniker, is copper in colour and quite gentle of aroma, with some light, faintly sweetish fruitiness and underlying notes of off-dry caramel. In body, it remains relatively placid, with a faint honeyish sweetness up front and a mildly bitter middle holding some gentle notes of dried leaf and toasted nuts. The finish is dry and mildly bitter, with that toasted nuttiness lingering.

Overall, this strikes me as not a lot more than a tweak of the brewery’s Cream Ale. Which given the latter beer’s success is perhaps understandable, but hardly celebratory.

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